Desalination = Nuclear Power

Former City Councilman Weir Labatt urged policymakers to consider investing a billion dollars in a desalination plant near the Gulf of Mexico. Current SAWS CEO and former state representative Robert Puente called that idea “finance science fiction.” They were both right.

The best source of water for a growing San Antonio is the “Third Coast.” The Gulf of Mexico offers the answer to water issues for San Antonio, the greater Houston area, Corpus Christi, Brownsville and probably much of the Valley. But for today, let’s focus on San Antonio and Councilman Labatt and Representative Puente.

Both men have become water experts, more specifically, the kind of experts who understand the layers of legislation and regulation affecting South Texas water. Labatt is right. The Gulf of Mexico is one or two desalination plants away from answering our water needs for the next century.

Puente is right. As of today (March 14, 2010), that is finance science fiction. Desalinating water is expensive. Not really. Every time it rains over the ocean, water has been desalinated. Desalinating water commercially for the nation’s 7th largest city is expensive.

A billion dollar plant is needed, but over 20-30 years, that won’t cost much at all. What will be expensive will be the power to desalinate the water and the power to pump it somewhere. The somewhere is an interesting question.

The first thought would be to pump it to San Antonio, but it may be more cost effective to pump it to coastal (downstream) communities to meet our downstream obligations, while enabling us to keep more of our Edwards water in San Antonio, both as potable and gray water.

Either way, it takes a lot of electricity to both desalinate and pump desalinated water. That is where nuclear power comes in.

Nuclear power plants are expensive to build, but once they are built, electricity is essentially free. In a coal or natural gas plant, we pay for both the cost of the plant and the ongoing cost of the fuel. For a reactor, our payments are essentially mortgage payments on the building, because the fuel rarely needs to be replaced. “Free” electricity is what makes desalination work.

Councilman Labatt and Representative Puente would be wise to bring Mayor Castro to the table and point out that power and water are the twin sisters of San Antonio’s future. Labatt and Puente need to tell Castro that both sisters have to be dealt with and paid for together. We should not build a nuclear power plant without building a desalination plant and the reverse is equally true.

Most important, we should build BOTH a nuclear power plant and a desalination plant as soon as possible. Together, they are not “finance science fiction.” Together, they will never be cheaper than they are right now.